Court battles over ‘right to protest’

Court appearances begin for the Fortnum & Mason activists

Quakers are among a group of campaigners facing court this month for their part in a protest at Fortnum & Mason in March.  The Friend understands that there are at least two Quakers among the 145 people arrested after a sit-in at the London store. The protestors began to appear in court last week to enter their pleas.

Meanwhile, a number of Quaker activists have welcomed a legal challenge over ‘kettling’, the practice of confining demonstrators within small areas for indefinite periods of time. 

The Fortnum & Mason sit-in was part of a campaign by UK Uncut against corporate tax avoidance. It was described as ‘a valid and important form of protest’, by Jay Clark, who attends Quaker Meetings in Birmingham and who arrived at Fortnum & Mason too late to join the protest, as the premises had been rapidly surrounded by riot police.

‘Everyone who was arrested [at Fortnum & Mason] had phones, watches, notebooks, diaries, clothes, essentially everything but their underwear, confiscated for “intelligence” reasons,’ explained Sam Walton of Bunhill Fields Meeting, who spent the day providing legal advice to activists by telephone. He explained the details when speaking in a personal capacity to Meeting for Sufferings, the national representative body of Britain Yearly Meeting, the formal name of British Quakers. 

Thirteen of the Fortnum activists appeared in court last week, all pleading not guilty to aggravated trespass. Others are expected to be processed through the courts shortly, prior to a trial in November.

It is not clear how many cases will come to court, as the Metropolitan Police are reviewing charges against a number of those arrested. They have already dropped all charges against activists aged under eighteen.

Prosecuting counsel Edmund Hall accused the campaigners of engaging in ‘loud and disruptive chanting’ which had ‘immediately deterred’ customers from continuing with their shopping. Defence lawyer Mike Schwarz compared the protesters to Rosa Parks, the US civil rights activist who triggered the Alabama bus boycott in 1955 by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger.

On the same day that the first Fortnum protesters appeared in the dock, another court heard a legal challenge over the lawfulness of kettling.

The news was welcomed by Beccy Talmy, who attends Jesus Lane Meeting in Cambridge. She was kettled in Parliament Square during student demonstrations on 9 December. ‘We were told we had to move back and if we got crushed then it was our fault,’ she explained. ‘They were pushing us and pushing us, both mentally and physically’. Her partner Dan Perrett, who also attends Jesus Lane Meeting, was pushed against a stone pillar by a police officer who called him a ‘prick’ and continued to shout at him to move back.

Beccy Talmy urged Friends to take a ‘collective stance’ to preserve the right to peaceful protest.

Her views were echoed by Jay Clark, who wants to see Quakers ‘standing up for nonviolent direct action, to help demonstrate that it’s not a choice between falling in line with tame actions and being a violent thug. There are creative nonviolent ways to protest.’

Meeting for Sufferings last month minuted: ‘We affirm our Quaker commitment to bearing public witness against injustice and our democratic right to hold the government to account’.

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